Interviewing Father John Misty: Singer, headlining Musikfest, want to get beyond image to his message

Father John Misty has seen a broad range of responses to his new album, “Pure Comedy.”

Released in April, the disc addresses what Misty — real name Josh Tillman — says are “ecclesiastical themes. Like, ‘What do we know?’ ‘Do we really know anything?’ ‘Is this all a joke?’ ”

But it also has gotten Misty, who plays a headline show at Bethlehem’s Musikfest on Sunday, labeled a provocateur — an artist who writes or performs a certain way just to get a response — positive or negative.

In a recent phone call from his home in Los Angeles, Misty/Tillman spoke about the new disc, the reactions it, and he, have been getting, and that infamous incident at the XPoNential Festival in Camden, N.J., last summer.

Here’s a transcript of the call:

LEHIGH VALLEY MUSIC: Hi Josh, how are you?

FATHER JOHN MISTY: “Hey, good. How are you doing?”

Just fine, thanks. Thanks for taking out time to speak with me today.

“Yeah, of course.”

So let’s jump right into this. I wanted to talk a little bit about your new album, “Pure Comedy.” Tell me about what you were looking to do with it. How did it come together? Did you do anything differently? Tell me the story of putting together the album.

“Oh boy. Uh, well, I guess I was … I just got married. Emma [his wife] and I had moved to New Orleans. I guess I was having a bit of a question in my mind in terms of where all this happiness – how all this happiness – was going to play into my career of writing songs of despair.”

[Laughs]

“[Laughs] And, um, I guess a lot of my writing up to that point had been the product of, like, things colliding and going wrong and whatever. And by the end of ‘[I Love You,] Honeybear,’ the end of writing that album, I’d come to this real sort of, I guess some kind of, like, temporary resolution, you know? That’s where, like, catharsis – in order for it to be that, you have to find some kind of resolution.”

Right.

“And so I’m sort of just staring into this, like, black hole of, like – I don’t know, contentment or something. “

[Laughs] ‘Black hole of contentment.’

“What’s that?”

I’m laughing at the phrase ‘Black hole of content.’

“Yeah, yeah [laughs]. And so I started, like, looking around for problems, I guess.”

[Laughs]

“[Laughs] And I started to piece together, I guess a few topics that have been, more or less … I started, like, really, really digging around the trunk of my psyche for stuff. And was kind of hitting on these really broad themes. And some really old stuff for me – like God, et cetera. And I was thinking, ‘Well, I think I’m gonna make, like, a Christian album.’ Like, I’m gonna address a lot of the stuff from my childhood. Just like the way I was raised, and sort of like kind of itching to make something, or to write something, from my, I guess, my pre-adult world view, you know? My pre-, like, liberal hedonist adulthood, you know?

“So these songs started to emerge – like ‘Pure Comedy’ and ‘Ballad of the Dying Man.’ These really kind of, like ecclesiastical themes. Like, ‘What do we know? Do we really know anything? Is this all a joke?’ You know, just these kind of, like very … nothing new, you know? And that’s sort of, like, the point of the album: There’s nothing new under the sun and these sort of issues that we think of as being so modern and so sophisticated really are not, you know?

“And so, yeah, the themes of the album are really kind of, like, pointlessness, faith, um, how to, like, create meaning. These questions of why do we insist on, like, numbing the human experience with whatever it is – narcissism or entertainment or … pretty pretentious stuff, superficially.

“But it really just depends on your attitude toward these questions. If you think that these … if you think that you have … if you’re someone who has just very successfully resolved these questions in your own life, then this album, it’s not really going do much for you, you know? But if you’re someone like me, who has sort of, like, never left their adolescence, then I think it can be a fairly satisfying look at that stuff.”

Did it surprise you at all that it was so well received – that it got such critical acclaim? That it sold in the Top 10? I mean, did it surprise you that so many people – for lack of a better phrase – “got it” or felt what you were doing?

“I mean, it’s been a really … I mean, it is, like, a really … the response was actually pretty polarized.”

Well, that’s true.

“Like, when the album came out, kind of taking a look at the reviews, the response really, it ranged from ‘This is, like, a very … this is a brilliant dismantling of the modern experience,’ all the way to, like, ‘This is the most kind of remedial, boring, take on remedial boring questions anyone’s ever heard.’”

[Laughs]

“Uh, and that’s sort of – I think that was satisfying for me, because, you know, the album was really – it kind of was engineered to be like a blank surface that people, that I knew people would end up projecting their own sh-t on. Like, I just did a big interview with this Christian magazine called Relevant, and the writer came to the house and from the beginning of the conversation, it was clear that all that he could see in the album was that it was in some way an attack on Christianity, or an attack on religion in general. And more kind of, like, liberal cultural writers and stuff saw it as an attack on Republicans or an attack on conservatism or whatever.

“And even people looking at it as … it was just sort of, wherever someone’s coming from, I think it’s easy for people to see their own prisms of belief in the album, no matter what side of the spectrum they’re coming from.

“But my intention for the album was for it to be like a love letter to human beings. And some kind of, like, I guess some sort of jump start into liberation. Because I think the first step of liberation is laughter. Like, if you can look at these very old sort of human conundrums, just go like, ‘What the hell is wrong with us?’ I mean, that’s kind of a place where you can start to move forward.”

I have to ask … I have to figure out how to correctly phrase this. But the depth of thought reflected in the album, whatever your intention was, it certainly isn’t the usual popular music. I mean, this isn’t the type of stuff you usually find on the radio or in popular music.

“Right.”

I mean, was that ever your intent? Why do you write this way? Is that – you didn’t intend for it to reach the radio stage? Or you didn’t care?

“Well the fact of the matter is when I sit down to write a song, my only intention is to write, like, a beautiful song that people will like. [Laughs] And that’s sort of like is kind of the evidence of how tone deaf I am. These songs just sound like good, beautiful songs to me. They don’t necessarily feel … on some level, it’s really just pragmatic, where I’m, like ‘Well, if I’m gonna write songs, then those songs are gonna need lyrics. So let me sit down and get something for me to sing.’ [Laughs]

“It really is just kind of … you know, for all my talk earlier, that’s just sort of me retroactively trying to make sense of what I did. Because it is just so instinctual. And that thought process, or whatever – that autopsy that I just laid out of how this album came out, that’s just me speculating in retrospect. I’m not really sure. My intention is only ever to write beautiful songs that people will like.

“So you can really just look at it and say, ‘Well, that’s just the way this guy’s brain works,’ you know? That when he sits down to write a beautiful song, that’s just what comes out.”

Let me ask this: So the name, nom de plume, character, whatever you want to call it of “Father John Misty” – what does that represent? I mean, is this just you’re Johnny Cougar instead of just John Mellencamp? Or is there a purpose behind writing as Father Misty?

“Well the name came about – it really was just that I had made music under my own name for a really long time and that music had not … J Tillman was – I came to this realization that J Tillman was alter ego. I wasn’t really writing in my own voice. I was writing the way that I thought a singer-songwriter should write. So in that way it was sort of a character. And when I realized that – that was a realization that it really doesn’t matter what you call yourself. Like on [his 2012 debut album as Father John Misty] ‘Fear Fun,’ there’s that line where I spell it out as plainly as I can, where I say, ‘I never liked the name Joshua and I got tired of J.

“And when I got to that point, it really was … it’s impossible to overstate how insignificant of a decision it was to call myself Father John Misty. Where it really was in a moment of like, ‘Whoa, you may as well just call yourself f—king Father John Misty,’ you know? And then I just stuck with that, you know?”

[Laughs] Yeah, but you know that people are gazing at their navels and scratching their heads and figuring out what’s behind Father John Misty – like I sort of just did.

“Sure, but they also would be doing that if I went by Josh Tillman. They’d be going, like, ‘Who is … John Tillman?’ You know. But I think –I don’t know what other peoples’ experiences are like. I don’t know if people are going, ‘Who is Bon Iver?” Or, ‘Who is Saint Vincent?’ Or ‘Who is … ,’ you know, whatever? It’s just this kind of – ultimately, I guess it’s just a question of, like, ‘Who is this person,’ you know? And I think a lot of people have a hard time believing that, when I get up on stage and talk the way that I talk and dance the way that I dance and present myself the way that I do, I think a lot of people do have a hard time believing that really is .. that those really are just my instincts, you know? I think you have to accept that I might just be that weird of a guy, you know?

“And there are people who look at – my fans are people who look at me and – whether it’s on Twitter or having a meltdown in Philadelphia, whatever it is, they look at me doing [it] and go, ‘Yeah, I could see myself doing that. I could see myself doing that.’

“And then people who despise me – of which there’s no shortage – are people who look at me and go, ‘I would never in a million years conduct myself that way. [Laughs]”

[Laughs]

“Or say that kind of sh-t or act that way or whatever. And then, since I am in bad faith with them, then they assume that it is some kind of act. That it’s some kind of … that it’s just this false, cynical thing, and that I’m playing, like, a cartoon character.”

You’ve just answered about three of my questions. And that’s how the line of questions was going to be – ‘Is it performance art? Et cetera, et cetera. So you’ve answered the questions. But you mentioned the performance at the XPoNential Festival in Camden last year and I have to ask you about that. What was behind what happened there and what was your reason for performing as you did?

“Well, it was a convergence of a few different factors – one of which being that I was pretty in over my head with some, like substance abuse in a really tough phase, personally. And then also just seeing very vividly this continuity between entertainment and what I do and things like Donald Trump happening in the culture, and really just kind of being revolted at myself, at the culture, at America – this whole thing, you know? To me it just was totally – I just could not …

“And I also have this really self-saboteur streak – this really self-destructive streak. And calling myself something like Father John Misty is part of that, you know? Where I realize I’m gonna call myself this thing that I know will make it that much harder for people to take me seriously, you know? But I’m gonna do it anyway, because it is sort of this self-destructive thing.

“And that – I don’t know. It’s all part of this, you know, soufflé of decisions and sometimes it looks like that.

“Now, I do think that that was really this kind of moment where the tides turned and turned with my faith with people. Like that was really when things switched from, ‘Oh, he’s funny and smart and weird, whatever, to ‘Oh, he thinks he’s funny, he thinks he’s smart, he thinks he’s weird.’”

[Laughs]

“You know, that really was – I’m not sure I’ll ever come back from that.”

[Laughs]

“You know, from that decision to throw that show, you know? Because that year I played 250 shows. I threw one of them – the day after Donald Trump got the Republican nomination. I was, like, really distraught. I was like … it’s hard for me to explain, but it was just like, ‘This is a very crude nightmare, you know, of stupidity. This is really thick. And I guess I just couldn’t in good … my conscious wouldn’t allow me to just get up and there and play [his song] ‘Bored in the U.S.A. for people just sitting around – just this complacency.

“I mean, to me, it would have been complacent to play the shows – to just have your regularly scheduled programming.”

Yeah. But since then, you were successful on “Saturday Night Live,” the success of your album – “Pure Comedy is doing really well. I think, to me, it looks like an affirmation to what you’re doing. I think that the public, or some of the public, or your fans are buying into it, I think.

“Yeah, it’s going fine, you know?”

[Laughs]

“[Laughs] You know, but it is, but it’s complicated. For me it’s complicated. There are a lot of artists who are just kind of like – people either like them or they don’t know them. With me, there’s this third category of people who know about me and I make them really upset, you know?”